Catholic News Service
The relationship between an aspiring DJ (Zac Efron) and his musical mentor (Wes Bentley) is threatened when the protégé falls for his patron’s live-in girlfriend (Emily Ratajkowski).
Alongside this casually physical love triangle, director and co-writer Max Joseph sets up a hackneyed conflict between the youthful hero’s artistic ambitions and the pressure to settle for a more mundane but practical lifestyle — in his case by joining his trio of closest friends (Jonny Weston, Shiloh Fernandez and Alex Shaffer) in working for a shady real estate operator (Jon Bernthal).
Genuine moral values occasionally surface in this tepid, noncommittal drama. But for the most part, its characters move through their shallow lives in a party-craving stupor from which even the forceful intrusion of love and death barely awakens them. Benignly viewed drug use, cohabitation and premarital relations, brief semi-graphic bedroom scenes, upper female nudity, a couple of profanities, pervasive rough and crude language.
The Catholic News Service classification is L — limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
